Electronic mail has become a common manner in which to communicate. A user of one data processing system or computer is able to electronically send messages, documents, etc. to a second user of another computer. The communication may be made over computer network lines, telephone lines, etc.
Users often send electronic mail to remote users who do not have access to a computer when the electronic mail is sent. This is because advancements in electronic mail allow a recipient to have electronic mail routed to several media devices. For example, a traveling recipient may have electronic mail routed to a telephone answering machine. To recover the electronic mail, the user can either play the electronic mail on the answering machine, or load it onto a computer.
It is often desirable to send actions, or instructions for a computer, in an electronic mail object. In the prior art, there is a method and apparatus for providing actions in electronic mail. The provision of an action in a piece of electronic mail saves the recipient the task of having to perform numerous and sometimes unknown keystrokes to implement the action. The user need only select the action in the piece of electronic mail for the receiving computer to execute the action.
Unfortunately, in the prior art, there is no way to send actions by electronic mail to a multimedia device, which device is not a computer. In the example discussed above, where the multimedia device is a telephone answering machine, a telephone message is typically recorded on audio tape. This precludes the recordation and subsequent use of actions in a piece of electronic mail transmitted to the answering machine. Recordation of actions contained within electronic mail would allow the recipient to subsequently play the recording to a computer and implement one or more of the actions.